The honorary Oscar given to Elia Kazan has generated renewed sympathy for the writers, directors, and actors whose membership in the Communist Party -- revealed in the 1940s and 1950s by courageous witnesses such as Kazan -- landed them on movie studio blacklists.

Such blacklists, it is said, are a form of "private censorship" that deprives people of their right to speak freely, on pain of losing their employability. "Censorship" -- the American Civil Liberties Union declares -- "can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups." But by this reasoning, private individuals who simply choose not to patronize their enemies are engaging in essentially the same wrongful activity as are governments that imprison their citizens for expressing unpopular ideas. (Capitalism Magazine, CapMag.com, 03/20/99.)